Old Dogs

Dog's Breakfast

I will say this for Old Dogs: It is exactly as funny as you’d expect a movie to be that stars John Travolta and Robin Williams as two bachelors who must suddenly take care of precocious 7-yearold twins, and which was directed by the man who made Wild Hogs. Which is to say, it is not the least bit funny, not once, not even for a minute. Imagine a season’s worth of plot devices from TV’s most generic sitcom, crammed into 88 excruciating minutes.

Here are the thoughts of Williams’ character in this frantic, contrived mess: “I had a one-night stand seven years ago, and it turns out I’m the father of twins! And now I have to babysit them for two weeks! But I’m working on the Big Account at my job, and I don’t have time! Oh no, they don’t allow children in my condos—apparently not even temporarily, to visit—so we have to stay with my best friend at his un-childproofed apartment! Oh no, if I screw up this golf game with the client, it’ll blow everything—and I accidentally took my friend’s medication this morning that gives me hallucinations!

“Oh no, my friend and I are going to breakfast with the kids, and everyone thinks we’re their grandparents! And now the staff is singing a ‘welcome to the grandparents’ club’ song, which surely does not exist in real life anywhere! How embarrassing! And now we’re on a camping trip with the kids, and the scout leader thinks my friend and I are gay, except we’re too stupid to realize he thinks that, because somehow it’s ‘funnier’ if we don’t know! D’oh! We’re on a collision course with wackiness!” Nothing about the premise or its execution is logical, and all the complications arise either because something implausible happened or because something plausible happened but the characters reacted to it idiotically. If you go, expect many kicks to the crotch, a lot of exaggerated panicking and no laughs.